Bits
First game of the season last Friday. What’s it called again when you don’t hit the ball all that bad but have zero idea of how to get it in the hole? Oh yeah: rust ×× Not rusty: Aaron Wise. The newly minted AT&T Byron Nelson champ is making us look awfully smart. In our 2018 SCOREGolf Annual Issue, we had Wise ranked as the PGA Tour’s No. 1 incoming rookie. Us and every other prognosticator, probably. Kid is a star ×× Kid also cut his teeth in Canada on the Mackenzie Tour-PGA Tour Canada and is the fourth graduate of that circuit (in the PGA Tour era) to win in the big leagues. Canadians Nick Taylor and Mackenzie Hughes, as well as Tony Finau, are the others ×× For those who follow the PGA Tour coaching world — and even for those who don’t — Scott Fawcett, who is gaining a lot of acclaim and interest on social media, and who works with Bryson DeChambeau, Jamie Lovemark and Beau Hossler, among others, will be at Glen Abbey GC in Oakville, Ont., on June 3rd giving a seminar on the increasingly-popular analytics-based course management strategy he developed called DECADE. (For some background, read this.) Space is available for the five-hour class, which costs $300 to attend. Contact Sean Casey (scasey@clublink.ca), the director of instruction at Glen Abbey, if interested.

Bites
Of all players, I wouldn’t have thought Matt Kuchar would bellyache the most about Byron Nelson host course Trinity Forest, an atypical PGA Tour track. Good on Kuchar for his mea culpa however — in regret, he nailed it ×× Fairmont Jasper Park Lodge, a mainstay in the top 10 of SCOREGolf’s Top 100, is now offering five- and nine-hole loops of golf after 3 p.m. It’ll cost you $60 for five holes and $99 for nine and the price includes, cart, rental clubs and range balls. Could see a few evening action fives or nines among groups staying at Jasper ×× Calgary’s Jaclyn Lee finished T5 at the NCAA Division I Women’s Individual Championship on Sunday. Lee was tied for the lead late in the final round, but stumbled home with two bogeys and a double-bogey on holes 15-17 before finishing with a birdie. A Canadian has never won the women’s individual championship while on the men’s side two Canucks have emerged victorious — James Lepp in 2005 and Matt Hill in 2009 ×× Here’s a quote from Jim Furyk that didn’t find its way into my story on the Canadian Open’s future (see below). When talking about a rotation of host courses versus a single, permanent host, the 2006 (Hamilton G&CC) and 2007 (Angus Glen – North) champion said this: “If we’re signing up (for a single venue), I’ll take Hamilton, how’s that? Or I’ll tell you what, the place out in Vancouver, Shaughnessy, and I realize that has some difficulties, as much as I love Hamilton and as great as Hamilton is, Shaughnessy is probably the best course. It is absolutely phenomenal, and Vancouver is incredible. It’s one of my favourite cities I’ve ever travelled to.” Never talked to a PGA Tour pro who didn’t echo those sentiments.

Barbs
With the RBC Canadian Open in line for a new date on the soon-to-be overhauled PGA Tour schedule, the question now is where would be the best spot on the calendar for it to land. Behind the scenes, three dates have been discussed: The week before the U.S. Open, left vacant my Memphis’ looming move to a late-July WGC event; the first weekend of July; and the second week of July. Some observers see nice synergy with the week before the U.S. Open. You could set up the Canadian Open host course as sort of U.S.-lite to prepare players for the following week. (You wouldn’t want to go all-in on a tough setup — no player wants to endure two straight weeks of can’t-miss-a-fairway golf.) But that date means you’d be losing out on any stars who prefer to take the week before majors off — hello, Tiger Woods — and if the U.S. Open is on the west coast, as it is next year at Pebble Beach, the Canadian Open’s field will suffer because of RBC’s desire to have the tournament remain in and around Toronto. What works better is one of the first two weeks of July, and the betting here is that it’s the second week, currently occupied by The Greenbrier Classic, which is rumoured to be moving to the fall. But let me throw this scenario at you: What if the Canadian Open could secure the Canada Day long weekend when it does not also conflict with American Independence Day? (Next year, July 1 is a Monday, the 4th a Thursday, which means the RBCCO would fall on the last weekend of June.) But then swap with the tournament that comes after it — so move to the second week of July — when July 4th falls on a tournament day? Couldn’t that work for both the Canadian Open — because it does not want to have to try to wrestle American players away from their own country on Independence Day — and whatever American-based event is adjacent to it? This might seem complex and far-fetched, but there is recent precedence. The Waste Management Phoenix Open, for example, moved up a week in 2014-15 to conclude on Super Bowl Sunday — now played annually on the first Sunday in February — as it’s done every year since 2011. It was played before the Farmers Insurance Open that year while every other schedule for the last six seasons has seen Phoenix taking place after the Farmers. I have no reason to believe this sort of scenario has been discussed with regards to the RBC Canadian Open, and the tour is likely loathe to include moving parts in its new schedule, but it would seem an ideal setup, wouldn’t it? In any event, we’ll find out in late June, early July at the latest when the revamped schedule is revealed.

Obscure thought of the week: Where are these squirrels getting all the shelled peanuts from?